Semiotic of Impulses

The semiotic of impulses is the organizing concept of Pierre Klossowski's *Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle* (its longest chapter is titled "The Valetudinary States at the Origin of a Semiotic of Impulses"). The impulses (impulsions) are "intensive states of the soul that are in constant fluctuation" (Translator's Preface §2) — Klossowski's single term for Nietzsche's varied vocabulary of Triebe, Begierden, Instinkte, Affekte, Pathos, etc. The impulses interpret one another through their fluctuations of intensity; "in themselves, impulse and repulsion are already interpretive" (Ch. 2). They form a semiotic — a play of signs — beneath consciousness. Consciousness, in turn, is a second, falsifying semiotic: the code of everyday signs, which "inverts, falsifies and filters what is expressed through the body" (Ch. 2). The body is therefore "a language of signs that is fallaciously deciphered by consciousness," and the whole of Klossowski's Nietzsche follows from the relation between these two semiotics.

Key Points

The impulses are interpretive in themselves: "the combat of the impulses takes place through a mutual interpretation of their respective intensities, which implies their own 'code'" (Ch. 2). Below consciousness there is already a semiosis.
Consciousness is the code of everyday signs: "Consciousness itself constitutes this code of signs that inverts, falsifies and filters what is expressed through the body" (Ch. 2). It is "nothing other than a deciphering of the messages transmitted by the impulses" — and "the deciphering is in itself an inversion of the message."
The "abbreviation of signs by signs themselves": the code reduces the fluctuating impulses to fixed signs, "apparently suspending their fluctuation once and for all." Error "is not between the 'true' and the 'false' but between the 'abbreviations of signs' and the 'signs' themselves" (Ch. 2, quoting Nietzsche).
Meaning is formed in the upright position: "Since everything leads to the 'head' (the upright position), the message is deciphered in a way that will maintain this 'vertical' position... Meaning is formed in the upright position, and in accordance with its own criteria: high, low, before, after" (Ch. 2).
The brain dominates "because of its very fragility": "the most fragile organ [the body] has developed comes to dominate the body... because of its very fragility" (Ch. 2). The reversal by which the cerebral function becomes master is the origin of the falsifying code.
The intensity overflows the sign: when a declaration fixes a fluctuation, "the ebbing flow of the intensity... overflows the fixity of signs and continues on, as it were, in their intervals: each interval (thus each silence) belongs... to the fluctuations of an impulsive intensity" (Ch. 2). What the code calls the "unconscious" is only this overflow.

Details

The two semiotics

Klossowski's Nietzsche operates with two sign-systems:

The semiotic of the impulses — the sub-conscious play in which impulses interpret each other through intensity (impulse/repulsion, rise/fall). This is the "authentic" semiosis, but it is mute: "the unintelligible and authentic depth out of which Nietzsche wanted to establish a new cohesion" (Ch. 2).
The code of everyday signs — consciousness/institutional language, which translates (and thereby falsifies) the first into fixed designations: subject, object, will, cause, identity. "Inasmuch as exteriority is installed in the agent by the code of everyday signs, it is only on the basis of this code that the agent can make declarations" (Ch. 2).

The relation is unequal exchange: "an intention is formed through the signs — minus their impulsive intensity." Nietzsche's project is "to retranslate the 'conscious' semiotic into the semiotic of the impulses" (Ch. 2) — not to abolish the code but to use it against itself.

The code of everyday signs

The code of everyday signs (sometimes "the everyday code") is Klossowski's name for consciousness as institutional language. Its key features: it is exterior (installed from outside; even "our so-called inner life is still the residue of signs instituted from the outside"); it is gregarious (it serves the conservation of the species — see gregarious-vs-singular); and it is falsifying (it produces the fictions of subject, will, identity, duration). It is the precondition of the simulacrum (which must use and exceed it) and the medium in which the agent is constituted. This is treated here rather than on a separate page because the code is the consciousness-side of the single two-semiotic structure; it carries the alias "code of everyday signs."

Resistance as the principle of organization

A silent but load-bearing thread (Ch. 10): the impulses, the intellect, and organic life itself are all defined through resistance. "The only existing forms of organization are those that can conserve and defend themselves against a great quantity of actions exerted against them" (KSA 11, 26[156], quoted Ch. 10). The intellect is itself "a constraining and selective impulse" whose function is repulsion — it maintains the agent's coherence by resisting impulses that threaten it. "Thought is only a shadow" of "the strength to resist." Coherence/incoherence are inapplicable to the impulses as such; they arise only in the relation between an impulse and the agent.

The aphorism as the form of the semiotic

Because conceptual discourse falsifies the impulses into a "fallacious coherence," Nietzsche's aphorism is the form that lets "the very act of thinking" resist conceptualization, substituting values for concepts: "the aphorism gives an account of the active impulsive unities, of their battles and their amalgams: it is the very language of what resists, the comprehension of what is incorporable, without passing through the intellect" (Ch. 10).

Connections

generates phantasm — the phantasm is the image the impulses produce before the code captures it
is falsified into the code of everyday signs by consciousness — the second, gregarious semiotic
constitutes the-agent-suppot — the "I" is a sign in the code, the fragile unity imposed on the impulses
is the affective-intensive register of tonality-of-the-soul — the soul's tonality is "a fluctuation of intensity" of the impulses
originates in valetudinary-states — Nietzsche's illness is what taught him to read the body's signs
reads will-to-power as the primordial impulse — "force itself," intensity, prior to the fiction of "will"
contrasts with the Freudian conscious/unconscious — for Klossowski's Nietzsche, "neither consciousness nor unconsciousness has ever existed"; only "discontinuity between silence and declarations in the agent"

Open Questions

Is the "semiotic of the impulses" a genuine sign-system or a metaphor? Klossowski insists the impulses "interpret" each other, but the criterion for sub-conscious signs (as opposed to mere forces) is left implicit.
How does the code of everyday signs relate to Saussurean/structuralist semiotics, contemporary to the book's 1969 publication? Klossowski does not engage structural linguistics directly, though the "code" vocabulary is of its moment.

Sources

klossowski-1969-nietzsche-vicious-circle — Ch. 2 ("The Valetudinary States at the Origin of a Semiotic of Impulses": the body as language of signs; consciousness as the falsifying code; the abbreviation of signs; the upright position; intensity overflowing the sign); Ch. 10 ("Additional Note on Nietzsche's Semiotic": resistance as principle of organization; the intellect as repulsion; the aphorism)